There should be a requirement that if a budget isn't agreed upon by the deadline, the previous budget will automatically continue for a length of time. Better yet, Congress should be financially penalized for every day we go over past the deadline.

Context is a useful tool. In this case, my question was specifically in reference to humans. Since we don't treat humans the same as plants or animals, there is no slippery slope argument that you can provide to legitimately counter my notion.

Except that your own argument *was* a slippery slope. You were arguing "If you hold this position on X, then why not also hold it on Y?". You've already stepped from the issue we're talking about at hand, to another semi-related one. I think it's a perfectly fair counter to observe that you could also continue to move on to some other issue as well? The same base logic applies. If "pro-life" is about protecting life when it's in the form of an unborn child, why isn't it also about protecting life when it's a convicted criminal (that was your argument, right?). But if it's those things, why isn't it also about protecting life when it's in the form of a cow, or a chicken, or a bug?

Silly? Sure. But that's the point of my response.

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*I'm not* advocating that being "pro-life" beyond the womb means no death for anyone. The scenario in question is that once the mother has the child, all attention and vigor to ensure that child has a good life decimates.

You were asking how one might be pro-life when it comes to protecting the life of an unborn child, but not when it comes to protecting the life of a convicted criminal. My answer is that "pro-life" as a position isn't the blind protection of life, but the idea that human life begins at conception and therefore an unborn embryo/fetus should be afforded the same right to life as any of the rest of us. Support for the death penalty isn't about denying that human life is important and people have a right to not have it taken away. It's about the fact that all rights have limits, and sometimes, in the case of the most heinous crimes, that includes the right to life.

The argument you made is weak because the fetus didn't commit a crime for which the penalty would be death in our system of government.

Oh. And to address the point you just made: Because it's about rights, not outcomes. Once you start legislating for the outcomes you want, and not for people to have greater rights, you're really on a slippery slope. Let people have as much freedom as you can, and then let them determine their own outcomes. That's the position of conservatives. And yes, part of that is that rights and responsibility come hand in hand. You're free to take actions as you will, and reap the rewards of good choices, and suffer the penalties of bad ones. That's part of freedom. You can't take one half of that away and think you can keep the other. It just doesn't work.

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Once abortion has become legal, continuing to fight to limit abortion transitions the fight against the choice of the woman. To make it incredibly difficult for women in Texas to have abortions, but not in California because you are unable to reverse the ruling, is attacking a woman's choice. Granted, attempting to reverse the ruling would equally be seen as an attack on choice, but that's the divisive political world that we live in.

Driving is legal, but we still place limits on doing things like driving while intoxicated, or driving on sidewalks, or speeding, etc, etc. And I think that the key point here is that the Roe v. Wade decision did not make abortion legal, all the time. It specifically set limits on when abortion must be allowed, when it can be allowed, and when it must not be allowed. The problem I'm trying to point out is that over time, the pro-choice movement has just kinda forgotten that last part and seems to just keep pushing the issue well past that which the court established back then.

We have people pushing back against attempts, not to make abortion illegal, but to merely ensure that abortions only occur within the guidelines established in the Roe v. Wade decision itself. Hence my comment that it's become more about "pro-abortion", than pro choice. The ruling was specifically about women having a choice to abort within a specific time frame of a pregnancy (determined by medical science of the day, and actually intended to be able to change over time as medical science changed). It was never about an absolute right.

At the risk of pulling out my stock conservative vs liberal canard, I think that some of this has to do with a fundamental difference in how liberals and conservatives view social issues. While both sides engage in adversarial politics (which arguably is necessary in our system), conservatives tend to pick a position on an issue and attempt to keep the law at that position. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to think in terms of a "direction" on an issue, and continue to push in their direction. As a result, we often define ourselves in these issues as pro this, or pro that, but in many cases that's not really accurate. Liberals tend to be more about pro/anti, while conservatives tend to be "this is where I think the law should be". A symptom of this difference in mindset occurs, for example, when a liberal will question a pro-life position and say something like "if you're pro life, then why don't you support mandated pregnancy?". Because the liberal is assuming that the conservative uses the same directional approach that he does, and thus being "pro-life" means to continue to push for more living babies. But the conservative doesn't view it that way at all. His position "stops" at a specific point.

Um... Liberals, on the other hand, often have a very hard time defining the end point of their positions. Conservatives have no trouble at all doing this. A conservative might say something like "I believe we should have enough taxes to pay for necessary government functions, but not <list of things he views as not necessary functions>". Ask a liberal at what point he thinks we've spent enough on even just one social program, and he has a hard time giving an answer. And that's before asking him where the limits on the number of different programs the government should be spending money on should lie. I guess I've just observed this behavior enough times in enough different political topics to believe that the same applies to the abortion issue as well.

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Pro-life people are equally stuck in the "us vs them" mentality that they are willing to shutdown the government over distorted videos. To reiterate, I'm not a fan of abortion, but if it's legal, then why close the government over using cell tissue to further science in a positive way when the alternative is simply disposing them?

Because that really isn't (or should not) be about pro-life, but pro-sensible regulation of an entire portion of health care. While the pro-life opposition surely comes about because they oppose abortion itself, this issue should cross that boundary into the sensible pro-choice area as well. As I pointed out earlier, the issue for those of us who are not pro-life is that the woman's health should come first. That is, in fact, the entire right foundation behind the pro-choice position itself. That a woman has the right to make choices about her own health, and specifically that this can include making a choice to abort. Additionally, the strong argument for legalized abortion was about the dangers of abortions which were being performed at the time (illegally). While the numbers surrounding back alley abortions were grossly exaggerated, the basic argument about women's health is still valid. The point here being that we legalized abortion, at least in part, specifically to ensure that women could obtain them in the safest manner possible. Similarly, the rules regarding tissue recovery from abortions (and other procedures) are designed to ensure that the doctors are putting the woman's health first in all cases. Health guidelines (admittedly not actual law, but specifically designed to help doctors comply with it) say that doctors should not even be aware that tissues will be donated from the procedure, much less which parts of the fetus will be donated, specifically so that they can't possibly be making decisions about the procedure which may put the desire to obtain tissue ahead of the health of the woman on their table.

That's what this issue is about for many of us. It should not be about pro-life versus pro-choice. We should all agree that a doctor performing these procedures should not even be placed in the position of having a conflict of interest. Period. This should be common sense. We should all support regulations that place a wall of separation between the donation of tissues resulting from an abortion, and the doctors performing them. Period. This should be a complete no brainer that every woman's rights group should be shouting for. Yet, oddly, they are not. One can only conclude that they are putting the issue of abortion and by extension the organization's that perform them, ahead of the very group of people they are supposedly there to fight for.

I'll also point out that it should not ever be about what the tissues are used for. That's also a dangerous line of thinking, since it leads one to accept different levels of care based on a vague, often rhetoric driven, argument about some end result (in this case, stem cell research). It creates an emotional argument instead of a rational one. Your basically saying "it's ok to put this woman in greater danger during a procedure because the end result will be more tissue, which may result in some medical breakthroughs, and that end justifies the means". The problem with this, as I've pointed out many times before in stem cell discussions, is; If you're ok with that (admittedly small) increase in risk to women for this today, what will you accept tomorrow if we do find a super cure using embryos or fetus stem cells? You've already set a precedent that our medical profession can increase risk of harm to their patients if the end result to society as a whole is great (or even just hypothetically great). But what if it's really great? What if we develop an immortality serum that requires harvesting cells from 8.5 month old fetuses? What if the only way to keep up with the demand for this serum requires running pregnancy mills?

Distopian? You bet! But it's a hypothetical moral question for you. Where is your "end point" on this? At what point do you stop and say "Hey. The ends really don't justify the means". Do you have one? I suppose a side issue for me is the observation about human nature, that once that choice is upon us, if we haven't already established firm rules about this sort of thing, we're going to make the wrong choice. Every single time. Call us conservatives cautious if you want, but this is why we tend to have issues with this sort of thing. We need to be really clear on what right we're protecting with every action we take, and constantly assess when or if we may be doing more harm than good. And, at the risk of coming full circle on this, that's why it's critically important to make a distinction between the right of a woman to make decisions about her health, and the "right to abort". Because in the pursuit of protecting the latter, we're actually seeing an infringement of the former.

Let's not forget that this whole thing is supposed to be about women's rights with regard to their own health. Not the right of a doctor to perform an abortion and obtain tissues for research. That's the part that some people seem to be losing sight of.

This will be meaningless to those relying on heavily edited videos and a poor understanding of the law to fuel their political agenda.

Poor understanding like the state AGs are only looking at whether their own state laws were violated? The bit about this that has most people on the right upset, is that this is something (just the latest in a long list of somethings) that the DoJ should be investigating. But it's pretty clear from Obama's immediate wagon circling and "turn this into a political thing" response that this is not going to happen. And that itself is just another in a long list of questionable selective enforcement actions by his administration.

It's not just this one thing, this one time, but a long standing pattern of behavior. And yes, this is easy to handwave away by just looking at this one instance. And heck, if it was just this one instance, we probably shouldn't worry too much. I just question how many times someone has to go into PP (or some other hallowed liberal organization) with a hidden camera and reveal some pretty shocking stuff going on, before more people will just acknowledge even the most basic fact that maybe we should have a bit more regulation and inspection of these things. Heck. The very fact that private citizen groups have to go through this much effort to do their own investigation already speaks volumes about the utter absence of oversight involved.

PP and clinics that perform abortions have become sacred cows to the left. So much so that they are allowed to operate with a level of inspection that would not be allowed at a fast food joint, let alone a location that performs surgical procedures. And that's a problem IMO. What happened to abortions should be rare and safe? We just chuck that out the window now?

Judging by your obvious concern for safety and transparency, gbaji, I imagine you advocate for full disclosure of the contents of fracking fluid, information that is currently not possible to get because it's "proprietary"?

Just curious how far your "we ought to know" concerns stretch.

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Jophiel wrote:

Last week, I saw a guy with an eyepatch and a gold monocle and pointed him out to Flea as one of the most awesome things I've seen, ever. If I had an eyepatch and a gold monocle, I'd always dress up as Mr. Peanut but with a hook hand and a parrot.

Judging by your obvious concern for safety and transparency, gbaji, I imagine you advocate for full disclosure of the contents of fracking fluid, information that is currently not possible to get because it's "proprietary"?

Wow. Um... That's totally out from left field there. We can debate disclosure laws, I suppose, but I'm not sure how that's relevant here. It's currently illegal to perform elective late term abortions in the US. Yet, despite this, and despite (nearly, and that it's only nearly bothers me) universal condemnation, abortion clinics continue to get caught performing them, and they get away with them for as long as they do precisely because abortion has become such a sacred cow that the left sees even the slightest attempt to regulate or inspect the industry as an affront to women's rights. Dr. Tiller's clinic performed elective late term abortions for 10 years. For all 10 of those years, people claimed that he was doing them by using the loophole of using mental health as the justification. To which the pro-abortion folks just circled the wagons and insisted that no one would ever do this because... well... they just wouldn't. So there's no reason to even check to find out! 8 years into his clinics operation, and after 8 years of fighting uphill legal battles, the state finally changed their disclosure laws to require an additional data point to be provided: Whether the impairment was physical or mental. Guess what? Every single one performed in the next two years was performed for mental health reasons. So not only were the opponents of his clinic right that he was doing this, he was exclusively doing this (the other doctor who was rubber stamping the paperwork has since been convicted for this btw).

The point being that in this industry, there's a lot of people who protect it and insist that nothing untoward is going on, but there's an alarming rate at which, when that protection is finally broken through, we discover that sure enough, exactly what people feared was going on, was going on. I'll point out that during the time that this was going on, Obama himself opposed a law in Illinois that merely required that late term abortions could not be performed for mental health reasons. His reasoning wasn't that they *should* be performed for such reasons (because we all know that should not be allowed), but because he insisted that existing law already prohibited it. Um... Except that they didn't. As far as I know, that loophole *still* exists in our law. The other doctor was convicted because of negligence (she didn't spend sufficient time examining the paper work to have formed a proper diagnosis). The actual practice of using mental health as a justification is still *technically* legal.

The point here being that there's no reason *not* to actually codify in the law that mental health is not a sufficient reason for performing a late term abortion. We all assume it shouldn't be. In the one case of a doctor being caught doing so, it was ruled as an insufficient reason, but only as a judgement issue after the fact, not a matter of up front law. Current doctors can (and almost certainly do) continue to use that excuse, and count on no one finding out precisely because our laws don't include sufficient documentation or investigation of the industry to determine if they are doing so.

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Just curious how far your "we ought to know" concerns stretch.

It's not about "we ought to know". It's about "we have to have a reasonable amount of regulatory action to deal with problems we have already seen happen". Not speculation. Not wild conspiracy theories. Not dramatic videos of flaming tap water (which turned out to be methane from his own well and had nothing to do with fracking). But actual actions being taken that we all agree should not be allowed, but which for some reason one "side" continues to shield. Unintentionally, I'm sure. No one thinks elective late term abortions should be allowed (right?). But by blocking any of the regulation, reporting, and inspection required to prevent them, the reality is that they're probably going on every single day.

We should pick a position on the issue and fight for that position. Not a "side", but a position. My position happens to be that elective abortion should be allowed in the first trimester, it should be allowed if there's no more health risk to the mother performing it than not in the second trimester, and not for any reason other than risk of death or significant physical harm to the mother in the third. That's my pro-choice position, and ironically it's pretty much aligned with the Roe v. Wade decision. But my position isn't about being "pro-abortion". I'm not interested in protecting the industry itself. I want to make sure it's both able to perform abortions that meet the legal criteria and also not performing those that don't.

I am just as bothered by attempts to circumvent the legal restrictions on abortion as I am by attempts to circumvent legal abortion. The problem is that I see a heck of a lot more of the former than the latter. There are certainly lots of pro-life folks who are working to change the law and reverse the decision. And they have every right to do so. As long as they do so legally and within the rules (I condemn things like clinic bombing of course). And when pro-life individuals do violate the law in the pursuit of their agenda, we have no problem investigating and prosecuting them. Both "sides" do this. The problem is that this isn't reciprocated on the political left. And that's the part I find troubling. Conservatives don't find investigating and prosecuting wrong doing by pro-life activists as harming their political positions on the issue of abortion. Quite the opposite. We don't want to be associated with such things (whether we're pro-life or pro-choice). But on the Left? Very different. The Left views any such thing as harm to their position and seem to actively block investigations or prosecutions.

And for the record, I have no problem with making sure that fracking sites are inspected regularly and are up to code. And I have no problem with making sure that the legal codes are constructed in such a way as to ensure that fracking can be done but can be done safely (see how that's a balanced position?). For me, it's not about "taking a side", but figuring out the best way to manage something and making sure it's managed in that way. I'm not "pro-fracking", nor "anti-fracking". I don't think that way. I think that we need to produce energy to power our nation, and we should always seek out the best balance of cost and safety in order to do so. Pick the best action, not a "side".

This will be meaningless to those relying on heavily edited videos and a poor understanding of the law to fuel their political agenda.

Poor understanding like the state AGs are only looking at whether their own state laws were violated?

And all coming back with a "no". Funny that, huh? But you just go on with your bad self insisting that "absolutely!" all the laws were broken forever. You can even make up imaginary federal laws about private research and insist that those were broken, too!

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I just question how many times someone has to go into PP (or some other hallowed liberal organization) with a hidden camera and reveal some pretty shocking stuff going on

Well, there was the time someone took a hidden camera into ACORN and lied about the film and conservatives ate it all up or the time Breitbart pushed an edited video about some bureaucrat with the Dept of Agriculture being "racist" and conservatives ate it all up, or the time someone took a hidden camera into NPR and edited it to look like some scary Muslim funding and conservatives ate it all up...

But THIS time we have heavily edited videos where the people pushing them have already admitted to lying (presenting a stillborn birth as an 'abortion') and... conservatives are eating it all up*. I also wonder how many times this can happen before people get smart but the answer seems pretty depressing.

Judging by your obvious concern for safety and transparency, gbaji, I imagine you advocate for full disclosure of the contents of fracking fluid, information that is currently not possible to get because it's "proprietary"?

Wow. Um... That's totally out from left field there. We can debate disclosure laws, I suppose, but I'm not sure how that's relevant here. It's currently illegal to perform elective late term abortions in the US.

It's relevant because pumping toxic materials into the ground where they can get into aquifers and damage the property or health of others is illegal, too.

I don't see you screeching for full disclosure about this sort of thing, though, so...gratz for hewing to the party line, I guess?

Y'know, for someone who claims to take in information and process it yourself with your gigantic, awesome brain you seem to be pretty terrible at it.

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Jophiel wrote:

Last week, I saw a guy with an eyepatch and a gold monocle and pointed him out to Flea as one of the most awesome things I've seen, ever. If I had an eyepatch and a gold monocle, I'd always dress up as Mr. Peanut but with a hook hand and a parrot.

Last week, I saw a guy with an eyepatch and a gold monocle and pointed him out to Flea as one of the most awesome things I've seen, ever. If I had an eyepatch and a gold monocle, I'd always dress up as Mr. Peanut but with a hook hand and a parrot.

Poor understanding like the state AGs are only looking at whether their own state laws were violated?

And all coming back with a "no". Funny that, huh? But you just go on with your bad self insisting that "absolutely!" all the laws were broken forever. You can even make up imaginary federal laws about private research and insist that those were broken, too!

Not going to rehash this again. The laws in question are federal laws, not state laws, so the fact that state laws weren't violated is a ridiculous counter. Did the US AG investigated to determine if federal laws were broken? Yes or no? That would be a resounding no. In fact, instead of launching even a cursory investigation into the issue, the DoJ instead launched an investigation of the group that took the video. You really don't see the problem with this?

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Well, there was the time someone took a hidden camera into ACORN and lied about the film and conservatives ate it all up...

You mean the multiple videos that showed a systematic pattern of violations by ACORN which ultimately lead to the organization being broken up (not destroyed, of course, because it's too useful, but just reformed with different names). That video? The one(s) where liberals circled the wagons to defend their organization? Then did it again. And again. And again. Until the sheer weight of the violations was so great that even the most nutty liberal couldn't really defend what they were doing anymore? You're going to rewrite history on this one? That organization was rotten to the core, and was actively involved in gaming the system to funnel money from taxpayers into a whole host of activities designed to directly benefit the Democratic party.

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...or the time Breitbart pushed an edited video about some bureaucrat with the Dept of Agriculture being "racist" and conservatives ate it all up...

And liberals circled the wagons again. I'll point out today, as I pointed out then, that the point of the video wasn't the speaker being racist, but the responses of the crowd was. That was the point of the video, to show the kind of mindset of the members of the NAACP and how far that group has come from being about fighting against racism, to picking a side when it comes to race.

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...or the time someone took a hidden camera into NPR and edited it to look like some scary Muslim funding and conservatives ate it all up...

I don't remember that one at all. I'm sure it was probably conservatives being right and liberals pretending that nothing is wrong at all. Because that's what you guys do. Ok. Just googled it. So yeah, they confirmed what folks on the right already knew, that NPR is chock full of incredibly biased liberals who use public money to push their own political ideology. Got it. Once again, you missed the point. It's not about who the people offering the funding were, but what they were asking the exec to do (and his enthusiastic attacks on Republicans and Conservatives) that matters. For an organization that receives public funding to provide unbiased content, he was so far outside of "unbiased" that it's not even funny.

Oh. And this was after Juan Williams was fired for failing to be sufficiently far left for NPR. When Juan Williams is presented as your conservative voice, you know you're pretty far into the left side of the pool. If he was viewed that way on MSNBC, or even CNN? Ok. That's just a statement about their alignment, but that's their choice. On NPR? Not cool. Um... This is why we conservatives want to defund these organizations. They claim to be non-political, but they quite obviously are very very political and very very aligned to the left.

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But THIS time we have heavily edited videos where the people pushing them have already admitted to lying (presenting a stillborn birth as an 'abortion') and... conservatives are eating it all up*. I also wonder how many times this can happen before people get smart but the answer seems pretty depressing.

I see the same pattern repeating. Liberals engaged in manipulating the law, facts, and public funds to push their own agendas, and when they get caught red handed doing so, they circle the wagons and pretend that the videos were faked, or edited, or whatever. I've read the transcript of the entire exchange Joph. I've quoted from them. Every single thing that the makers of the video claimed is true. You're free to argue that PP didn't technically violate this law, or that law, but it's quite clear that their actions are things that most of the public are quit uncomfortable with. Actions which presumably don't get much press because PP doesn't advertise them, the mostly left leaning media makes a point to not talk about, and whenever some conservative leaning media tries to do so, they get slammed just like you're doing now.

Look. I'm as skeptical of conspiracy theories as the next guy. But the best way to counter them is with transparency. You show that what you're doing is above board. You invite inspection. You welcome regulation as a means of ensuring that what you're doing is being done correctly. But it's amazing how much secrecy goes on with these liberal sacred cow groups. It's just funny to contrast how the Tea Party groups have been treated in the media, despite being shockingly open (oh, and let's not even mention the whole IRS tax thing), to how PP, or the NAACP, or ACORN operate. They're in the shadows, hiding behind layers of protection. They talk in riddles about their methods and agenda. They can't come right out and say what they stand for. Kinda like much of the liberal agenda though. It only grows when most people don't really know what's going on.

But hey. Maybe that's all just conspiracy hype, right? But it would be much easier to dispel if these groups weren't so darn closed off.

Not going to rehash this again. The laws in question are federal laws, not state laws, so the fact that state laws weren't violated is a ridiculous counter.

So it's a huge coup that the state AGs investigated but meaningless because they were investigating state laws? Huh. That said, considering how wrong you were about every aspect of the federal laws, I can see why you're not interested in "rehashing" your errors.

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You mean the multiple videos that showed a systematic pattern of violations by ACORN

No, I mean the ones that were found to be groundless leading to a $100k settlement from O'Keefe. News from anywhere, etc.

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I'll point out today, as I pointed out then, that the point of the video wasn't the speaker being racist, but the responses of the crowd was.

No. Just... no. There wasn't a trailer explicitly calling the woman racist because they wanted you to listen to some garbled crowd noises.

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I don't remember that one at all.

News from anywhere, etc.

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I see the same pattern repeating.

You too?

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You're free to argue that PP didn't technically violate this law, or that law, but it's quite clear that their actions are things that most of the public are quit uncomfortable with.

"Technically"? No, they didn't violate the law. Full stop. Your ignorance of the law and desire to believe they did (despite your ignorance) doesn't mean that they "technically" didn't. And I'm not sure what your definition of "most" is but a clear majority wants to keep PP funded and a larger majority says not to shut down the government over it. Maybe they're "technically" uncomfortable? Or "technically" most?

Last week, I saw a guy with an eyepatch and a gold monocle and pointed him out to Flea as one of the most awesome things I've seen, ever. If I had an eyepatch and a gold monocle, I'd always dress up as Mr. Peanut but with a hook hand and a parrot.

Rep. Chaffetz managed to humiliate himself today during the Planned Parenthood hearing, presenting misleading data from an antiabortion group as though it came from Planned Parenthood (he actually said it was from PP) and demanding that PP president Cecile Richards explain/defend it

You were asking how one might be pro-life when it comes to protecting the life of an unborn child, but not when it comes to protecting the life of a convicted criminal.

I never mentioned or even insinuated "convicted criminals". I personally differentiate the killing of a convicted criminal from a fetus vs a roach vs a dog. So, as I said, you cannot use a slippery slope to counter my question. So, I ask again, are you willing to expand the "pro-life" mentality to extend beyond the womb?

Gbaji wrote:

Driving is legal, but we still place limits on doing things like driving while intoxicated, or driving on sidewalks, or speeding, etc, etc.

The term "legal" was all encompassing, to include restrictions. There are limitations on how much you can drink before you can drive. Let there be laws with a BAC of 0.0000001% or laws that say you can only purchase limited alcoholic beverages during restricted off hours, people would be outraged. Just think about how pro gun activists act with any gun control law. Funny how it's "imposing on freedoms" when it's dealing with guns, but not with abortions.

Not going to rehash this again. The laws in question are federal laws, not state laws, so the fact that state laws weren't violated is a ridiculous counter.

So it's a huge coup that the state AGs investigated but meaningless because they were investigating state laws?

When did I ever say it was a coup (huge or otherwise) that state AGs were investigating PP? You're creating your own strawman here Joph.

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You mean the multiple videos that showed a systematic pattern of violations by ACORN

No, I mean the ones that were found to be groundless leading to a $100k settlement from O'Keefe. News from anywhere, etc.

Um... Except the whole "ACORN dismantled as an organization" part, of course. The suit against O'keefe was typical of liberal response though. Like Obama sending the DoJ, not to investigate the possibility that PP might just be selling human body parts, but to investigate the whistleblowers. You don't see this as massive political protection of these organizations? Anyone who dares to challenge them gets sued, investigated by the DoJ, investigated by the IRS, etc.

You're actually defining the legitimacy of an allegation against these organizations based on how strongly the political left attacked those who made the allegations? That seems... problematic. Maybe just look at the allegations and the evidence and make a decision based on that? I know... crazy!

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I'll point out today, as I pointed out then, that the point of the video wasn't the speaker being racist, but the responses of the crowd was.

No. Just... no. There wasn't a trailer explicitly calling the woman racist because they wanted you to listen to some garbled crowd noises.

And I'll point out, as I did back then, that the point of the video was about the crowd response. But hey. It's not like wiki doesn't have the the correct facts:

wiki wrote:

He states in the blog post, "eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help", and that the main point of the blog post and video release was that "Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another group’s racial tolerance.

This is a quote from the original blog post which accompanied the video (I'm 99% sure I told you all this back when this was first happening, but you apparently forgot or something). But hey. In case that's not enough, let's just get it from the horses mouth

Breitbart wrote:

Breitbart’s main objective by releasing the video was to call out the NAACP, an organization who has recently gone to great lengths to condemn the Tea Party’s alleged racism, for sanctioning racism in it’s own organization. Sherrod immediately became the scapegoat for the embarrassed NAACP and USDA, but she was never the target, the NAACP itself was, and the delight the audience took in the racist part of Sherrod’s speech leaves them exposed.

It was the NAACP, in an attempt to deflect attention away form themselves (which seems to have worked on some people), who condemned Sherrod for her statements and called them racist. But again, at the risk of repeating the key point, it was not about Sherrod's statements, but the NAACP members reaction to her statements. The entire point of the blog was to talk about the hypocrisy of the NAACP calling the Tea Party movement racist (absent any actual evidence of such), while engaging in this sort of very open and obbvious racism in their own meetings. During the period when she appeared to be bashing white people, they laughed and cheered, then kinda got silent when she reached the end and talked about racial tolerance and doing the right thing. Kinda like the GOP reacting to the Pope when they thought he was talking about abortion, but was also talking about the death penalty. Well, with the major difference that positions on those two issues are generally accepted as valid positions to hold, while being pro-racial discrimination is (or should be) universally condemned.

So other than being wrong about everything, you...um... Well, that's about it. Way to keep your head in the sand for like 5 years on this one. Maybe the next time you bring the subject up, you'll remember that it was about the NAACP, and not the scapegoat. Probably not.